The College Perspective by Lindsey

Students cram into a white, two-story house, rap music blaring from the speakers. In the kitchen there’s an intense beer pong match, people are crammed onto couches nearby, talking and drinking. Downstairs the music is even louder. A girl carrying a bottle of Jägermeister yells “Shots? Shots?” at anyone who comes near her. A group of very drunk girls tries their hardest to take a picture with their arms around each other’s waists while all of them lean dangerously close to falling on top of each other. One girl chugs an entire bottle of Smirnoff surrounded by people cheering her on.

Sound familiar?

According to recent reports, around 4 out of 5 college students abuse alcohol. Students arrested each year for alcohol-related violations can reach up to 110,000. Besides that, 1,825 students on average die each year from alcohol-related injuries.

For most students, especially in small towns across Iowa where there isn’t much else to do, excessive drinking starts in high school. Even though binge drinking is on the decline, many middle to lower class students still struggle with excessive drinking versus their wealthier counterparts. This trend becomes more and more common once they go on to college.

For people like Austin Norton and Cameron Shook, college is the first time they come into contact with alcohol at all. Norton says, “I really wasn’t against drinking, I just never had the opportunity in high school. I was a nerd. People just had booze and I went for it.” Cam agrees with this sentiment.

It’s unclear why heavy drinking is so common for college students, but Norton believes it has to do with social interaction. He says, “Some people are just alcoholics, but I would say it’s mostly trying to fit in and it’s a social crutch essentially, though it’s a lot less common nowadays. There’s just a general better understanding. As a culture, we’re more appreciative of the detrimental effect of alcohol and drugs. And as far as social crutches go we have our phones now so I’m sure that helps.”

Even though Shook comes from a small town where drinking runs rampant among the teenage population, she didn’t start drinking until college as well. Unlike Norton, however, she’s spent the last year trying to recover from a summer of binge drinking, almost bordering on alcoholism according to some.

She says, “I had a huge falling out with my roommate and friend since high school my freshman year of college. They created a really toxic environment for me and I lost a lot of self-esteem. With school piled on top of that, I started to drink pretty regularly but it wasn’t a problem. The stress from this last year at school helped start my heavy drinking. I drank every night and became obnoxious to the point that my roommates moved out to get away from me. Over the summer the drinking got worse and I was raped three times. I live on my own now and I only drink three drinks every night. I don’t really know why I started drinking so much, but I definitely think the drinking culture at my college (University of Iowa) helped.

On the other hand, sometimes students at large schools still don’t drink despite ample opportunities. Lauryn Feauto is one such student who attends Iowa State University. She says, “I personally just don’t have any interest in drinking and possibly not being in control of myself. Plus, I have an underlying feeling that I could quickly become an alcoholic due to an addictive personality.”

Despite the expectation of heavy drinking in college, graduation is normally the catalyst that separates binge drinkers from alcoholics. The amount of drinks consumed by the average adult in a middle-class job typically drops the more years go by.

Norton believes it’s simply because of the change in lifestyle. He says, “It’s partly getting older. It’s hard to keep up with that lifestyle. There isn’t room in your life for it with family and work.”

Feauto agrees, saying “We get busy and it gets expensive.”

Even though people are still drinking, most funnel it into structured hours during the week, only weekends, or one or two drinks at a work function. These are the unspoken rules of moving into adulthood, yet they don’t affect everyone. More than 15 million people are still struggling with alcohol abuse in America in 2018.